If my calendar showed April Fools' Day instead of March 31st, I would think the big Google announcement was a joke: $149 Chromebooks, with one model available from Walmart? I know some of these laptops sell for $199. But $50 less and models from Haier and Hisense?

Meanwhile, ASUS will, in summer, start selling something for even less: Chromebit, a $100 candy-bar size carry-all computer. Plug it into a HDMI-compatible display (like your TV), and your Chromie lifestyle is even-more mobile. The company also will release Chromebook Flip, a tablet-convertible wannabe, sooner. Someone tell me: This isn't a Foolie prank?

By Any Other Name Netbook?

None of these computers is high-powered by any means. What do you expect for used Ford Pinto prices, a Mercedes? Chromebook Pixel LS is the luxury laptop for you, otherwise. By the specs, these are netbooks running Chrome OS.

All four devices use the same core chips and, based on my experience, come with too little system memory. The Flip's IPS display is tablestakes, while the 200-nit screens on the other two don't ante up. What's the saying? You get what you pay for.

Chromebit is the most-interesting, ah, bit here. The device turns just about any HDMI-equipped TV or display into a computer. For $100, that's not bad benefit.

LMAOL

Timing is interesting. At the weekend's start DigiTimes speculated that Microsoft would enable OEM partners to bring $149 Windows laptops to market, as a means of combating Chromebooks, particularly among K-12 educational institutions.

As a seasoned journalist, I long ago learned not to believe in coincidence. News of the one likely relates to the other, whether Microsoft proactively seeded vaporware news ahead of today's Chromebook announcements, or Google rushed ahead before actual sales start—or both (and, yes, maybe neither, but don't you love conspiracy theories). Big G and M share many of the same partners. For sure, each is tipped off about the other's plans.

Maybe Microsoft should leave $149 to Chrome OS and keep Windows a bit more premium. Perception is everything in business, and these new Chromebooks come off cheap, for price and configurations—and my skepticism about user experience is wider than—what—the Grand Canyon, the distance between our galaxy and Andromeda? I can't even say because it's so big.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Keep in mind that I am a Chromebook enthusiast, which is all the more reason to be critical. I want to see the platform succeed. Cheapo Chrome OS laptops look like poison pills to me. If they're slow and laggy, particularly in the school setting, sales could collapse. What? Educational IT administrators don't talk? Buzz doesn't spread?

Value for price is one thing. By the measure of the configs, the $149 models are not. The Flip impresses some, for the IPS screen. But for that price, 2GB RAM is still too little, particularly for an ARM-based Chrome OS computer.

All that said, the nagging question: Will the partnership with China's Rockchip open up new markets for Chromebooks, particularly in regions where low price matters more than performance? For sure, such circumstance would be in keeping with Google's "for everyone" marketing tagline. But that's a topic I raise but must answer in a future analysis.

Facebook is about more than being social; it's about presenting a version of yourself to other people. When you share a photo of your meal, you're making a statement: "look at this delicious expensive meal I can afford", "look at the fancy restaurant we're visiting", or "gosh, aren't I healthy for making this salad?". But of course Facebook is not just filled with photos of food -- there are also photos of kids, presenting an image of family life.

Starting today, Facebook is rolling out a new scrapbooking feature designed specifically for pulling together photos of your child. The idea is to make it easier to collect together photos into one place so you can view all of your memories without having to jump from place to place.

In a blog post (with the slightly uninspiring title of "An Optional Way to Organize Photos of Your Child on Facebook" -- sell this stuff! Be proud of it!), father and Facebook product manager Dan Barak introduces the new pilot, explaining that by using a special tag it is possible to add photographs to a customizable scrapbook. As it is likely that it will not just be you taking and managing photographs, you can share ownership of the scrapbook with your partner.

Facebook has created a video that shows off how the feature works:

To help keep the scrapbook truly personal, only you and your partner are able to add photos to it. Only your chosen tag automatically adds a photo to the scrapbook, so you don’t need to worry about friends adding other pictures unvetted.

The feature is rolling out to Facebook on the desktop, on Android and on iOS. To get started with your scrapbook, go to your profile and click About followed by Family and Relationships. You should see an invitation to start a scrapbook, so click Get Started and follow the instructions.

Before Microsoft announced Surface 3, choosing a Surface tablet was ultimately a matter of deciding which Surface Pro 3 model fits you best, depending on your budget and needs. But now that there's a new kid on the block, which is offered in four, very distinct trims, finding the right Surface just got trickier.

Just like its older brother, the new Surface 3 features a high-resolution display, promises great battery life, offers a decent amount of storage, packs an x86 processor and runs Windows 8.1. The optional Type Cover keyboard makes an appearance as well, and so does Surface Pen. But there are some differences, of course. So which one should you buy?

Now that the specs are out of the way, let's compare the two and find one where they shine.

Power

Many users will be considering a Surface device for resource-intensive applications, and that requires plenty of processing power. Here, Surface Pro 3 wins, hands down.

Surface Pro 3 is equipped with high-end Core i processors, which are designed to offer a good balance between performance and battery life, while Surface 3 is equipped with an Atom processor that prioritizes battery life over outright speed. Not to mention that Surface Pro 3 can be had with a very powerful Core i7 processor, which furthers the performance gap.

Also, Surface Pro 3 can be had with 8 GB of RAM, twice as much than Surface 3 offers in its flagship model, which will make multitasking easier. Even the base Surface Pro 3 model comes with 4 GB of RAM, while the base Surface 3 only offers half as much.

That said, Surface 3 will be able to handle typical Windows software, like Google Chrome and Office. It just won't be able to handle all your virtual machine instances or development software as well as (or even remotely close to) Surface Pro 3.

Productivity

If you ignore the x86 processor found in Surface 3, the smaller Surface looks more like a typical tablet than a mobile device that might replace an ultrabook or smaller laptop.

It will run all the Windows programs that users want, naturally, however it is limited in the productivity department by its smaller 10.8-inch display. In practice, you'll be able to browse the web, write an Office document and handle all your email, but you may want to connect it to a bigger screen to increase productivity.

However, Microsoft is trying to make Surface 3 appeal to more consumers by bundling a one-year Office 365 subscription with each purchase. That's not the case with Surface Pro 3; you'll need to buy one separately. Having used Office 365 for a few good months now, it's hard not to see the value in it (hey, on top of Office, there's 1TB OneDrive storage thrown in for free -- and if you know where to look, you can unlock unlimited storage), especially for folks with tight budgets (like students).

Meanwhile, Surface Pro 3 is designed as a "tablet that can replace your laptop". It's got a bigger display, akin to what you can find on a popular ultrabook like Apple's larger MacBook Air, it comes standard with a stylus (Surface Pen, optional on Surface 3), the kickstand can be angled in any number of ways (Surface 3's kickstand only has three positions), and the optional Type Cover keyboard is larger, and, most likely, more pleasant to type on, and also comes with a larger touchpad area.

Connectivity

Even though on the surface both Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 are capable of meeting the needs of a road warrior, only Surface 3 also gives the user the option to connect to a 4G LTE network. This can be a major advantage for those who don't want to use their smartphone to tether or are unable to do so.

Also, no matter which Surface 3 model you choose, you get Wi-Fi 802.11ac as standard. This isn't the case with the base Surface Pro 3 model, which gets the slower Wi-Fi 802.11n. The speed difference can be substantial, as long as you have a solid Wi-Fi 802.11ac router.

Both slates offer a full-size USB 3.0 port, and a mini DisplayPort to connect an external display. It's worth pointing out that Surface 3's connectivity can be enhanced using a Surface Pro 3 Docking Station (it goes for $199.99).

Mobile Credentials

Let's talk about portability and battery life.

Both Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 promise similar battery life, except that whereas Surface 3's battery life is quoted for video playback, Microsoft rates Surface Pro 3's battery life for Wi-Fi browsing. As such, we can't really compare the two directly, as it'd be an apples to oranges comparison. However, both devices should offer great battery life when used accordingly.

When it comes to portability, Surface 3 is the clear winner. It's both smaller and lighter, which means that it won't take as much room in a briefcase or backpack. Even with the optional keyboard on, it won't be much bigger or heavier than Surface Pro 3, sans its Type Cover keyboard.

That said Surface Pro 3 packs a bigger punch, which will make it easier to work with heavy software on the go, if you ever need or want to do so. It's something to keep in mind, as battery life is likely to be similar and the extra bulk isn't intimidating.

The Elephant in the Room

It's the cost. Surface 3 is priced like a high-end tablet. The base model kicks off at $499, and for the money you get the 64 GB version with 2 GB of RAM. Step up to the 128 GB version with 4 GB of RAM, and you'll have to shell out just $100 more ($599). The 4G LTE option adds $100 to the cost, for either model.

For a Type Cover keyboard, Microsoft will ask $129.99 (once it's available, of course). The stylus is a $49.99 option, which, depending on your needs, you may or may not want to get. Type Cover, however, is a must-have from my point of view.

Now let's look at Surface Pro 3. The base model, which offers 64 GB of internal storage, Core i3 processor and 4 GB of RAM, costs $799. There's no 4G LTE option, but Surface Pen is included. Type Cover also costs $129.99. You may be able to get Surface Pro 3 for less, seeing as it's quite old at this stage and there's plenty of stock.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from spending upwards of $1,949 on Surface Pro 3 (without a keyboard, I should point out), to get the top-of-the-line model with 512 GB of internal storage, Core i7 processor and 8 GB of RAM.

So, if cost (and the added mobility) is a major concern, Surface 3 makes more sense. The $300 price difference, which isn't small, between the base models can go towards a Type Cover keyboard, extended warranty and other things.

Fundamental Differences

Going by the specs alone, Microsoft has introduced Surface 3 for people who want Surface Pro 3, but do not need the extra performance offered by the Core i processors nor the larger display.

Those can be folks who work more on the go (hence the 4G LTE option), don't run heavy software, and who, when they're at the office, connect their Surface to a proper monitor (which Surface 3 can handle, of course). If that's you, maybe Surface 3 should be your first option.

Surface 3 retains all the other benefits provided by Surface Pro 3, like the compatibility with the docking station, Surface Pen support, and more, but offers them in a much more portable package. What's not to like?

Meanwhile, Surface Pro 3 is aimed at folks who are looking for a tablet (let's say hybrid device) that they'll be using more at the office than on the go (or, if it's more on the go, they don't mind/they need the extra screen estate), which can run heavier software, and that they can store lots of data on. They also have to look past the higher asking price.

Basically, Surface Pro 3 is more like a Swiss Army Knife, while Surface 3 looks more like a camping knife, in comparison. Personally, I prefer the Swiss Army Knife, even though the camping knife looks quite good for considerably less money (metaphorically speaking, of course). How about you?

Here in New York, we just encountered a very brutal winter. While shoveling is an inconvenience, it is dangerous too. Having a heart attack from the strain is not uncommon. Plus, slippery roads and walkways make both driving and walking potentially risky activities.

Injuries aside, the last thing you want to experience in a snowstorm, however, is being stranded. If your car battery dies, a pair of jumper cables can save the day, but only if another motorist drives by and is willing to help. Today, Cyntur announces the JumperPack mini. Not only can you use it to jump-start your car without another vehicle, but it can charge your phone too.

"The portable and lightweight (less than one pound) 12,000mAh lithium-Ion device can jump start cars with up to eight cylinder engines, while also doubling as a portable charging station for USB powered devices. Cyntur’s JumperPack mini is available now for $99.99 at Target stores and Cyntur.com", says Cyntur.

The manufacturer further explains, "additional features include a 200 lumen torch, which can also function as a strobe light during emergency situations, and an integrated 2.1Amp USB port to quickly and efficiently charge smartphones, tablets and more while on the go".

The JumperPack mini utilizes a special technology, that protects the user from accidentally connecting the cables to the wrong terminals. Instead, the user can connect it in any matter, and it will adjust accordingly.

At one hundred bucks, it is a bit pricey, but it can surely save you or a family member in an urgent situation; how can you put a price on that? The fact that it can charge a phone or tablet is icing on the cake, as it may enable someone to call 911 even if the phone battery is depleted. The flashlight should come in handy too.

BetaNews has one on hand, and we will be unboxing and reviewing it shortly. What aspects would you like me to test? Tell me in the comments.

My friend Andy Regitsky, whom I have known for more than 30 years, follows the FCC, blogs about them, and teaches courses on -- among other things -- how to read and understand their confusing orders. Andy knows more about the FCC than most of the people who work there and Andy says the new Net Neutrality order will probably not stand. I wonder if it was even meant to?

You can read Andy’s post here. He doesn’t specifically disagree with my analysis from a few days ago, but goes further to show some very specific legal and procedural problems with the order that could lead to it being killed in court or made moot by new legislation. It’s compelling: Andy is probably right.

I’m not into conspiracy theories, but this Net Neutrality situation suggests a strong one. Let me run it by you:

1 -- The new FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, comes from the cable TV and wireless industries where he worked as a top lobbyist. He’s a cable guy.

2 -- Wheeler proposes the exact sort of Net Neutrality rules we might expect from a cable guy, keeping the Internet in Title I of the Communications Act as an Information Service and allowing ISPs to sell fast lanes to big bandwidth hogs like Netflix.

3 -- The big ISPs, having got a lot of what they wanted, still smell blood, so they take the FCC to court where much of the order is struck down -- enough for the FCC to either back down or rewrite. Wheeler decides to rewrite.

4 -- Somewhere in there comes a phone call to Wheeler from President Obama and suddenly the former cable guy becomes a populist firebrand, calling for Internet regulation under Title II, just as Verizon threatened/suggested in court.

5 -- The new order is exactly the opposite of what the big ISPs wanted and thought they might get. It’s Armageddon to them. What are they going to do? Why sue of course!

6 -- The new order is seriously flawed as Andy points out. It’s a mess. But at this point it’s also the law and if life is going to get back to something like normal all sides are going to have to come together and agree on how to move forward. Verizon or some other big ISP can sue and get changes, but will they get the right changes? They didn’t the last time.

7 -- The better solution is for Congress to change the current law or write a new one. But this is a Congress that’s against the President, though maybe not solidly enough to override a veto.

8 -- So the big ISPs have their lobbyists lean on Congress to write such an Internet law but make it one that won’t be vetoed. The Internet goes back under Title I as an Information Service but Net Neutrality is codified and maybe even strengthened. President Obama gets the law he wanted all along but couldn’t rely on his party to produce.

When you think of the world's majestic rivers many names come to mind -- the Mississippi, Amazon, Nile, Seine, Thames, and several others. The Danube also springs to mind, as the beauty of the famous river sprawls out, spanning multiple nations and attracting those who wish to go on one of its famous cruises.

The allure was too much to resist for Google and the company dispatched a Street View team to take that popular boat ride. The result is a stunning journey down the famous body of water, going from one end to the other.

"Starting today, you can cruise this international waterway with Street View in Google Maps, sailing through six countries, three capitals, and enjoying many arresting landscapes along the way. To capture the imagery, the Trekker was mounted on the riverboat ms Treasures, operated by Tauck, and Scylla, its maritime partner, for cruises along the Danube and other European rivers", states Google's Ulf Spitzer, a product manager for the company's Maps division.

Along the way you will pass through Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and more. And you'll be treated to stunning views of both landscapes and castles, among other things.

Spitzer concludes "That’s why I find it even more exciting to connect all the pieces on Street View, follow the river all the way, and see what a grown-up and majestic river 'my' little Danube from Ulm becomes when it flows into the Black Sea".

Today is World Backup Day, I'm not sure if it's significant that it comes just before April Fool's Day, but it does seem that the backup message isn't getting through to everyone.

A new survey of 1,000 UK adults by digital storage manufacturer Verbatim reveals that one in five have never backed up their home computers and more than a third never back up their mobiles.

"Having the hard drive on your PC crash can be a traumatic experience. It's not difficult to do regular backups. There’s a plethora of hardware and software solutions available for backing up, and innumerable tutorials and advice on the internet. Back up and restore is even built into the latest version of Microsoft Windows and requires just three clicks of the mouse. Apple offers similar functionality with Time Machine," says Rüdiger Theobald marketing director of Verbatim. "Computer data recovery is a tricky business. Where physical failure has occurred, and the hard drive needs to be worked on in a cleanroom, typical costs can be in excess of £500 and there’s no guarantee all the data will be recovered".

Of those who had reported losing data from their computers in the last year, 25 percent experienced data loss because of hardware failure, 17 percent due to accidental damage, 13 percent because of a virus, and a further 13 percent lost out to software corruption.

It seems that men are more likely than women to back up their home computers and phones every month, according to the research.

"One potential issue, when it comes to our apparent reticence about backing up, is that people don’t trust online storage providers in spite of the fact that they routinely commit our content to the likes of Facebook and YouTube," says Theobald, making the point that online backups should be seen as a supplement to and not a replacement for local copies.

He also warns of the need to consider media life. "What also is apparent is that people do not pay as much attention as they should to considering the likely longevity of the media they use. The average hard drive -- internal or external -- will last for five years and USB/flash memory sticks around eight years".

Verbatim has also produced an infographic highlighting some global statistics on the main causes of data loss, the types of file people are most worried about losing, and the excuses they use for not backing up. You can view it below.

Surface Pro 3 is the tablet that can replace your laptop, according to Microsoft. Assuming you spend money buying a Type Cover for it of course. My colleague Brian Fagioli absolutely loves his Surface Pro 3, but it’s not cheap.

If you fancy the slate, but your budget won’t stretch to the asking price, there’s good news -- Microsoft has just announced a cheaper follow up to Surface 2, called, naturally enough, Surface 3, and it’s cheaper than the Pro version, and doesn’t run Windows 8.x RT like its predecessor.

The new tablet sports a smaller 10.8-inch screen, runs full Windows 8.1 (and will run Windows 10 in time), and costs from $499, for which you get 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, and a year’s subscription to Office 365.

It's powered by a quad-core Intel Atom x7 processor and the screen supports pressure-sensitive pen input, like the Surface Pro 3. It is thin (just 8.7 mm) and light (1.37 pounds or 622 grams) too. Obviously it's nowhere near as powerful as the Surface Pro 3, but it's a good compromise if you can't afford the larger device.

Surface 3 also has front- (3.5MP) and rear-facing (8MP) cameras that both capture 1080p video. It's charged via microUSB, like most (non-Apple) phones. It includes a full-size USB 3.0 port, a Mini DisplayPort and a microSD card reader.

As you’d expect, it doesn’t come with a keyboard, that’s extra.

There's also a mobile-broadband version, called the Surface 3 (4G LTE).

We're all increasingly concerned about our privacy and the footprint that we leave on the internet. It's not surprising then that more of us are turning to anonymous proxies to hide our origin IP and HTTP details.

But new research from website security company Incapsula has uncovered a darker side to the use of anonymizers as a source of DDoS attacks.

According to the findings DDoS attacks from anonymous proxies accounted for 20 percent of all application layer attacks. On average, perpetrators were directing traffic from 1,800 different IPs. This is what Incapsula calls a "Shotgun" attack.

The idea behind this type of attack is to use a large number of open proxies, turning a single-source denial of service (DoS) attack into a distributed one (DDoS), thereby making it much harder to mitigate. It's also attractive to attackers as it makes them harder to trace.

The attackers harvest a list of publicly available proxy servers, using a script or online list tools available online. They then use a modified version of a DoS toolkit or a homemade DoS script to send out a batch of malicious requests through each of the harvested proxies.

This produces a scattering effect, similar to the small pellets from a shotgun shell -- hence the name. Yet, where the real shotgun pellets would disperse, the DoS requests always zero-in on the same target; hitting it from multiple directions creating a DDoS attack.

The graphic below shows the distribution of a Shotgun DDoS compared to that of a similarly sized conventional attack. With anonymous proxies, the attack cannot only spread across multiple IPs, but also across multiple geographic locations, making geo-blacklisting techniques ineffective.

The report shows that nearly 45 percent of all shotgun DDoS attacks originated from IPs on the Tor network. Of those, 60 percent were performed using Tor's Hammer DoS tool. Anonymous proxies averaged 540,000 requests per attack.

For more about Incapsula's research into DDoS attacks and how to guard against them you can visit the company's website.

After all of the talk, some action. Microsoft has been gentling building the hype about Spartan for some time now, but it's only with the release of Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 10049 that we get to, officially, go hands on. This is the web browser that's replacing Internet Explorer, the default web browser in Windows 10, so it has quite a role to perform.

It's a browser that's "built for the modern web" -- whatever that means -- and it sees Microsoft trying to shed the shackles of IE and move forward. Microsoft has been talking the talking for months, but does Spartan walk the walk? No. Spartan, at the moment, appears to be a joke. Let me elaborate.

Of course there are the usual caveats of "this is pre-release software", "it's an early build", and "it'll all change by the final release". As when I have looked at Windows 10 previews, there will undoubtedly be suggestions that any criticism I may level at Spartan should be delivered to Microsoft rather than aired in public. I'm doing both. Anything I say here is also fed back to Microsoft. This article is a platform for me to share my thoughts with you and to see what you think.

It has been suggested that Microsoft's Technical Preview software is not meant for review. This is not a review, it's a recounting of my experience. It may be the same as yours, it may differ; I'd like to compare notes. If I have problems with Spartan but you don’t, why is that? Is there a difference with our setups, or is it just a peculiarity?

You might think Spartan is brilliant. You're wrong, of course, but I'd still like to hear why.

So what issues do I have with Spartan as it stands? Where shall I begin?

I realize, as I hope I have made abundantly clear, that this is pre-release software. It's meant to be the merest taster of what's to come, and our opportunity to shape the direction in which things might travel. That said, I fail to see why MS bothered with releasing it in its current form; there's nothing to it.

I realize that there's something of a clue in the name Spartan (should we see it as a reference to sparseness, or the city of Sparta rather than yet another Halo link?), but the interface is bare to the point of uselessness. It's like Microsoft just took the Windows Phone version of Internet Explorer and made it bigger. Windows 10 introduced the idea of (lots of) white space, and it's a theme that continues here. There's a place for white space, but here it seems to serve only to make interface elements huge.

Spartan's toolbar is decidedly overweight; let's compare it to Chrome. In the space Chrome houses tabs, the toolbar and the favorites bar, Spartan doesn’t even have room for the tabs and toolbar -- this duo is around 50 percent fatter than the three program elements in Chrome. A bold new design it may be, but it certainly could not be described as anorexic. Everything is so big and chunky. On the plus side, this makes it fat-finger friendly, but it's sure as heck not pretty or an efficient use of space. With everything being so stripped back, options are very few and far between making the browser very hard to personalize.

Apart from a horrible design, image rendering really isn't very good. A quick comparison between the Meet Project Spartan page in both Spartan and Chrome shows that Microsoft's new browser displays images in a fuzzy, smudgy way. It's almost as though really bad anti-aliasing has been enabled; things are so much clearer in Chrome.

Microsoft proclaims that Spartan lets you "do cool things like write or type on a webpage". What is this? A browser for 7 year-olds? Then there are compatibility issues. Google+, for instance, simply doesn’t work -- so much for Spartan switching engines as and when required.

I had been planning a week -- or at least a few days -- of using only Spartan, but at the moment, it's pretty much unusable. I can only hope that it comes on in leaps and bounds because at the moment, it's a joke.

This is meant to be about ditching Internet Explorer. I should be excited... but I need something to be excited about.

The new release debuts the Heartbeat user rating system, plus a number of incremental improvements and tweaks. Version 38 has also been made available in Beta and includes some more radical changes, including a new tabbed-based preferences UI.

The new Heartbeat user system will appear on a random subset of users’ browsers each day, asking them to both rate and then help promote Firefox through other channels via a series of buttons, which comprise donating to Mozilla, liking or following Firefox on Facebook and Twitter, contributing to Mozilla and signing up for Firefox news via email.

Users unhappy at being interrupted in this way should browse to the about:config screen, then set the string value for browser.selfsupport.url to "".

Other new features include Bing search now performing secure searches using HTTPS, improved notification about user availability in Firefox's new Hello chat tool, and the opportunistic encryption of HTTP traffic where a server supports HTTP/2 AltSvc.

A number of changes see various TLS security improvements as well as improved performance of WebGL rendering on Windows through newly added support for Direct3D 11. The update also includes the now customary extending of support for various HTML5 and CSS controls.

Developers gain access to an experimental add-on -- Valence -- that extends Firefox’s debugging tools to other browsers, including Chrome and Safari. Within Firefox itself, there’s a new Inspector animations panel to control the animation of elements, plus a new Security Panel has been added to the Network Panel.

Firefox for Android 37.0 is also slated for release shortly -- this will add support for sending video to Matchstick devices, and promises an improved download performance alongside a new download manager back-end. Other notable changes include the URL bar now displaying the page address rather than its title.

Also available is Firefox 38.0 Beta 1, which sees tab-based preferences make an appearance alongside a new Reading List tool and the addition of Suggested tiles to the New Tab page. The Hello chat tool also gains an active tab and window sharing during conversations.

One of the main reasons why third-party media players like Media Player Classic and VLC are extremely popular among Windows users is the proper subtitle support. A lot of folks watch videos in a foreign language, and having the option to easily attach a subtitle in their mother tongue, no matter the format it's made available in, is a must-have feature for many.

It would help if Windows Media Player or the built-in Video app, the latter of which is part of Windows 8 and newer versions of the OS, would meet their needs, but, so far, that hasn't been the case. However, Microsoft wants to change that with Windows 10.

According to the the software giant's Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals Team general manager, Gabriel Aul, Windows 10 will ship with support for popular subtitle formats ASS, SRT and SSA, which use the unformatted UTF-8 encoding.

You might recognize SRT, as it's a popular format in which subtitles are offered for download from popular sources. ASS and SSA aren't as well known, but they're in fact commonly used for embedded subtitles.

Supporting ASS and SSA also means that Windows 10 (well, its built-in media players anyway) will recognize subtitles which are embedded in videos offered the popular format MKV, and not just DVDs or Blu-Rays. I believe it's not a coincidence that Windows 10 already supports MKV, which, as some of you may know, is a widely used format for videos shared, so to speak, via BitTorrent.

It's nice to see that Microsoft is actively trying to catch up, and willing to go the extra mile to make it easy for users to enjoy their videos. That said, I do wonder whether the software giant will promote these features, considering their connection to piracy. I suspect that the software giant is betting on word of mouth marketing to attract those using third-party media players.

It's easier to combat security threats if you're prepared for them so it isn't perhaps surprising that security teams are increasingly turning to threat intelligence to stay ahead of the game.

A new report commissioned by endpoint protection specialist Webroot and prepared by the Ponemon Institute shows that most companies believe threat intelligence is essential for a well-rounded cybersecurity defense and has proven effective in stopping security incidents.

It does, however, also point out that threat intelligence needs to undergo changes in order to make it more timely, accurate and actionable. The report's findings show that 40 percent of companies surveyed had suffered a material security breach in the past 24 months, and 80 percent believed if they'd had threat intelligence at the time of the breach, they could have prevented or minimized the consequences of the attack.

The report is based on a survey of 693 IT and IT security professionals in the US, with 61 percent of them working in large companies. Only 36 percent of respondents rate their own company's defenses as strong. Almost half are increasing the amount of intelligence data they receive in order to prevent or mitigate the consequences of an attack.

There's concern about speed of response though with 56 percent saying intelligence becomes stale within seconds or minutes. The more valuable features of a threat intelligence solution are the ability to implement intelligence and gauge the trustworthiness of the source in real time.

Almost half of respondents (49 percent) use paid for sources of intelligence, saying that free sources aren't adequate for comprehensive threat analysis and make it more difficult to prioritize threats. A third of respondents expect to increase their threat intelligence budget significantly in the next two years.

"Businesses are struggling to identify and stop new web threats because they must assess the risk of more unknown objects than before and the rate of change across the threat landscape is faster than their traditional security technologies can keep up with," says Patrick Kennedy, vice president of enterprise marketing at Webroot. "The study highlights the need for highly accurate and timely threat intelligence to help organizations assess the risk of incoming data, reduce the volume of security incidents, and accelerate response to successful attacks".

Late last year, Google introduced support for multiple email providers in Gmail for Android, welcoming users of Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail and other such services to manage all their accounts using its app. There are plenty of folks who are not just Gmail or Google Apps users, after all. However, the app wasn't properly designed to handle all the extra accounts that users would set up.

The problem? Users had to switch between accounts every time they received new emails or wanted to reply to a message. Now, Google is finally correcting this by giving Gmail for Android a much-needed unified inbox.

A unified inbox can be incredibly useful when you're dealing with multiple email accounts, as it lets you manage all your latest emails from a single location. No more switching between accounts. At the time of writing this article the latest version of Gmail for Android isn't yet available on my Google Nexus 7 -- it's said to be rolling out over the next couple of days.

Other than the new unified inbox, Gmail for Android also adds threaded conversations for accounts other than Gmail or Google Apps, which adds to the consistency of the app. An improved auto-complete for search, more responsive animations, and larger attachment previews complete the list of changes.

On top of introducing an update to Gmail for Android, Google also updated its Drive app for Android, iOS and the web. The biggest change is the Google Photos folder, which is a collection of all your Google+ photos and videos.

It is being introduced to make it easier for users to manage their photos and videos from the cloud storage locker, a feature which rival services have had long before Drive. I'm surprised that it took Google so long to offer it.

We might have waited ages for a new build of Windows 10, but a mere fortnight later and Microsoft has rolled out yet another update, again initially only to Windows Insiders on the Fast ring.

The star of this build is Project Spartan, Microsoft’s new web browser. It’s an early version, but it’s a good look at what the tech giant has been working on, and of course it comes with the new rendering engine. That’s not all that’s new in this latest OS build, however. Let’s take a more detailed look.

Since Spartan is the main (almost only) addition in Build 10049, let’s look at that first. The browser looks much as you might expect it to, with big square tabs at the top, and the address/search bar just underneath. To the right is a button for reading view (displays just the story, removing any distractions from around it) and a star so you can add a page to favorites or reading list. There’s a button for accessing favorites, reading list, history and downloads, one for making web notes, and another for providing feedback. As you use the browser, you’ll be asked questions, such as how easy it was to find certain features.

A More button gives you access to additional options, including Settings, which lets you customize the browser. Unlike Internet Explorer, Spartan is pretty basic which, it could be argued, is no bad thing in a browser. It does what you want it to, and it’s easy to use. Do I see myself using Spartan as the default browser? No, but it has potential and it’s not (in my opinion at least) awful like the Modern version of IE found stinking up Windows 8.x. That said, while the browser’s project name is quite exciting, Spartan looks as boring as hell.

So what else has changed in build 10049? Well some of the included apps have had a makeover and now appear in white and gray, rather than dark as they did previously. Calculator, Alarms & Clock, and Voice Recorder all sport the lighter look, and frankly it’s dull, dull, dull. Microsoft might be shooting for classy here, but the end result is just bland. A few color accents would make a massive difference. Would it hurt to make the record button in the Voice Recorder red, rather than gray?

Windows XP was, at launch, described as a Fisher Price operating system with its bright, colorful (and child-like) buttons. Windows 10 seems to be the flip side of that, with each new version becoming more boring, and depressing -- visuals wise -- than the last.

There’s no option to switch between the light and dark themes in the apps, but hopefully that will be introduced in a later build.

And the option to make everything look and feel a lot happier would be good too!

Have you tried Build 10049 yet? What’s your view of it, and Spartan? Do you think it’s classy, or 50 shades of bland? Comments below.

ImageUSB is a free Windows application for creating and writing images of USB drives. It sounds much like many other free tools, but wait -- this one is much better than you might expect.

The program comes from a trustworthy developer, PassMark Software, so you can download it with confidence. That won’t exactly take long -- it’s a very compact 463KB -- and there’s no installation required, just unzip and go.

A straightforward interface lists all currently connected USB drives, and gives you the option to create images from, or write images to them.

That’s no great surprise, but what stands out here is not only that ImageUSB reads and writes .iso, .bin and .img images, but it can do so concurrently. If you want to clone one USB key to two, three, four others -- or as many as your PC can support -- then the program is able to do it in a single operation.

ImageUSB isn’t just copying the files, either, or even the file system. It’s intended for use with forensic applications, and produces exact bit-level copies of everything, including all unused and slack space, and the Master Boot Record.

As a bonus, you also get options to zero (securely wipe) or reformat USB keys. We didn’t test the latter feature, but PassMark says it works with "even hard to format drives".

The program hasn’t worked as you expect? ImageUSB may be able to help even here, thanks to an on-screen log. If it doesn’t display a USB drive on launch, for example, just glance at the log box and you’ll see the drives it’s checked and any errors that came up.

Overall ImageUSB is convenient and easy to use, with a solid set of features, and especially good at bulk imaging. Give it a try.

Xiaomi is back in the news once again. At an event in China, the Chinese technology conglomerate today launches the much anticipated new variant of its 4K TV. Called the Mi TV 2 (yep, no Mi TV 3 yet), the new version sports a 55-inch display and costs RMB 4,999 (equivalent to $800 USD).

The world’s most valuable startup gleaned a lot of attention last week when it launched the 40-inch, full-HD variant in its Mi TV 2 lineup. The 55-inch television set is the successor to last year's 49-inch Mi TV 2 that retails for $640. The TV, which was until now only available in China, is expected to launch in India and other regions later this year.

As for the specifications of the new Mi TV 2, the set has a 15.2mm ultra-thin frame and just 6 mm bezel on three sides. One would assume that Xiaomi is using cheap materials to keep the price low, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The 55-inch 4K display (3840 x 2160 pixels) is manufactured by Samsung.

The new Mi TV 2 comes powered by a MStar 6A928 quad-core 1.4GHz processor paired with Mali-760 MP4 GPU. The company says that it has re-designed the Bluetooth subwoofer and sound bar. It comes with a Dolby MS12 virtual surround sound system. Other features include 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 8 gigs of eMMC5.0 flash storage. Much like the FHD variant of the Mi TV 2, the new version also supports H.265 codec, and out of the box support for popular media formats including MKV, and MP4 among others. The TV also supports Dual-band 802.11ac WiFi. If for some reason you were still not satisfied, the new TV also supports 3D movie playback. The company hasn't specified the operating system, but it is likely running on Android 4.4 KitKat with MIUI skin on top.

The new Mi TV 2 is available for purchase in China starting today. There’s no word on international availability. But the good news is that the company last month announced that it will debut in United States and Europe markets later this year.

At the sidelines of the new Mi TV 2 launch, the company also announced a cheap variant of its already dirt cheap Redmi smartphone. The new variant is called the Redmi 2A and costs just $96. The company also launched a weight scale called the Mi Smart Weight Scale, which costs just $16. Furthermore, Xiaomi also unveiled a Mi Smart Plug Board which costs just 8 bucks.

What do you think about this company? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Tens of thousands of British Airways frequent flyer accounts have been compromised in a cyberattack, forcing the company to freeze the accounts and issue an apology, the media have reported.

British Airways sporadically responded to tweets from concerned customers, The Register reports. In one such exchange it said:

"We’re sorry for any concern. We’ve become aware of some unauthorized activity in relation to your account and have frozen your Avios as a precaution. We’ll be sending you more details via an email".

The company said only a small portion of its millions of customers were affected, and that personal information, such as names, credit card information addresses was not stolen in the attack.

However they won’t be able to use their accumulated flight time for some time now.

The company, which has millions of customers, expects to resolve the problem in a few days.

"British Airways has become aware of some unauthorized activity in relation to a small number of frequent flyer Executive Club accounts", a company spokesman said in a statement sent to IB Times UK.

"We would like to reassure customers that, at this stage we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within accounts, including travel histories or payment card details".

"We are sorry for the concern and inconvenience this matter has caused, and would like to reassure customers that we are taking this incident seriously and have taken a number of steps to lock down accounts so they can no longer be accessed", the spokesman added.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Most of the hype around online marketing these days seems to revolve around using social media, big data and other tools to predict what the customer wants.

It would be easy to assume that outbound marketing techniques like email campaigns have become a bit last century, but Victoria Godfrey, chief marketing officer at B2B data provider Avention thinks otherwise. We spoke to her to find out why.

BN: Does email still have a place in a social media world?

VG: Social media marketing is effective at keeping prospects and customers engaged and informed on a daily (or even much more frequent) basis. However, email campaigns are still king when it comes to conversion, especially for B2B companies. In today's marketing landscape, social media and email are both relevant and required -- they're just doing different jobs. Through email campaigns, marketers can use lead scoring and event-based triggers to target prospects that are already in their database, further along in the funnel and more likely to make a purchase. These targeting techniques increase the chances that a prospect will respond by up to 600 percent. While social can contribute to lead conversion as well, email allows marketers to track the prospect-to-customer journey more efficiently so that they continue to optimize campaigns.

BN: Isn't it true that email marketing in the past has simply been about throwing out large volumes of material and hoping some of it sticks?

VG: By now, the availability of big data should have done away with any remnants of the see-what-sticks mentality. Modern marketers know that reaching decision-makers requires far more specificity, and they also know that the information to reach that level of precision is readily available. The email campaigns delivering returns on investment today are those driven by big data analytics. Rather than mass emails, these brand messages are targeted down to the prospect’s position level, the region of his or her business activity, the market sector, the stage of the prospect’s business and any number of other factors.

BN: How can companies increase the effectiveness of their marketing emails?

VG: One of the most useful strategies for increasing effectiveness is tracking milestone events. These are the changes that indicate prospects are likely ready to buy, and marketing campaigns tied to these moments have higher success rates. For example, if a prospect company announces it has hired a chief information officer (CIO), is expanding into a new city or is laying off workers at headquarters, those events might be essential information to brands selling technology, recruitment tools or outsourcing services, respectively. Marketers can set trigger alerts inside their data to look for these moments like these when significant change is occurring inside a prospect company.

BN: How can they monitor that effectiveness?

VG: The great thing about email is that it's relatively easy to track the effectiveness of campaigns and adapt accordingly. Any campaign should include at least one clear call to action, whether it’s signing up for a webinar, visiting a landing page, following the company on social or downloading a case study. Marketers should monitor campaigns closely to see how these calls to actions are performing and how those metrics compare to previous campaigns. If you're seeing a decrease, pivot and try a new message. On a macro level, marketers should always keep an eye on whether email lead sources have helped to contribute to an overall increase in closed or won opportunities. It’s important to keep in close touch with sales to assess what’s working and what’s not.

BN: What are the most common emailing mistakes?

VG: The most common mistake in email today is a hesitation to apply big data analytics to campaigns. This data is obtainable, but because marketers don't always understand what to do with it or why they should shift their methods to embrace it, some fail to do so. This is a mistake. To get ROI from email campaigns, brands have to invest in technology that automates the process of collecting dynamic data and identifying targets based on defined ideal profiles. Once this segmentation is obtained, the messaging must be tailored to specific audience segments. You can’t send the same campaign to five different email lists and expect to see the same results.

BN: How much difference does the shift toward mobile devices make?

VG: Increasingly, prospects are reading -- and screening -- their email on mobile devices. That makes it easier than ever for recipients to swipe a screen and delete a marketer’s message before reading it. Therefore, those messages have to be as finely targeted as possible in order to reach the right prospects at the right times. On mobile, compelling subject lines and responsive design also influence how effective email campaigns will prove to be, so marketers need to be tuned into best practices in these areas, as well.

Victoria Godfrey is the chief marketing officer of Avention. Prior to joining Avention, she spent five years running her own marketing and research company, Godfrey Research. Previously, Victoria was the chief marketing officer of Zipcar. She has an international MBA from Thunderbird (The American Graduate School of International Management) and a bachelor's degree from The University of Vermont. Since 2001, Victoria has taught marketing at the Gordon Institute at Tufts University.

Most instant messaging apps market themselves on just how much fun they are, with group chats, location services, media sharing, and of course way more stickers and emojis than everyone else.

Free Android and iOS app Caliber bypasses all this and goes for a different audience entirely: it’s instant messaging for your business contacts.

The key difference is Caliber’s LinkedIn integration. The app starts by importing contacts from your LinkedIn account, rather than your phone, and it keeps them synced afterwards.

As a result your contact profiles have the same business-oriented flavour, with details on their skills and the companies where they’ve worked.

You can also search for and try to connect with new professionals, as with LinkedIn, although here that’s even less "instant". The system won’t hassle you with real-time notifications of any requests, instead sending you weekly summaries, and automatically removing anything you ignore for two weeks in succession.